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By Any Means Necessary

Mitch, in 2008 my mentally incompetent mother at an assisted living facility in St. Paul probably voted. We never had her declared incompetent, but the staff knew she was completely out of it. They also knew she was so afraid of being kicked out of a place she liked she would do whatever the staff person told her to do. She literally didn’t know what day of the week it was let alone who was running for office. I was the responsible party. I never changed her voter registration when she moved. Somehow she registered to vote at her new address. I found absentee ballot application information in her apartment as well as an I Voted sticker on her walker. I was livid, but it was after the election so there was nothing I could do. Before senile dementia had set in she adored Norm Coleman but you can bet her vote went to Franken.

I suspect a lot of this goes on. After all, SEIU represents a lot of nursing home staff.

35 thoughts on “By Any Means Necessary”

It is a matter of public record if his mother voted or not — the voter registration rolls are not secret, just the vote.

To jump from maybe mom voted from a sticker on a walker is stupid – just check. To assume from this that the staff is responsible for her wrongly voting – and voting democratic – based on information that is widely disseminated at assisted living facilities where many people are NOT similarly incapacitated and DO VOTE is just evil, another accusation without support.

Mitch – you have my email. I have experience with having assisted with the affairs of two elderly ladies who were incapacitated by Alzheimer’s, including their legal status. If my own experience, including having someone declared incompetent in court, can be of help, have this person contact me at the Penigma2@hotmail.com. Give me an hour to get over how angry I am right now (it’s 7:50 am), but after that I will be happy to help by then; it is a very difficult task, caring for Alzheimer’s relatives.

Beyond that – shame on you, damn it, for spreading more slander about the legitimacy of voters. The responsibility for allowing or denying this woman her legal right to vote is NOT within the authority of health care staff at an assisted living facility.

And frankly, if someone IS involved actively with their relative at such a facility, they would be in better communication with the staff about such decisions and such care.

To promote the idea that low paid incredibly kind people who do a really difficult job in caring for these people, of the most personal and frequently unpleasant kinds of care – a job we all used to do for the elderly much more ourselves – to question their integrity in this way is just beyond vile.

Voter information is widely distributed at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. It is distributed to everyone – those who don’t get a lot of mail or are not in charge of their own affairs anymore at least feel included by receiving all manner of distributed material, including things like the facility menu. Doesn’t mean they understand any of it anymore, but many of them like getting it in a world in which they are increasingly stranded and isolated by their illness.

Similarly, there are many occasions where bright stickers are used by the staff for the residents and patients. It is a source of continuing interaction where that contact, that interaction is decreasing daily. The presence of a sticker is so far from an indication of wrongdoing as to be laughable if it were not so nasty.

If this were a serious concern – why is it only being brougth up in 2010? And why to you and not the secretary of state or a the appropriate DA for investigation? My guess why – becaues there IS NO legitimate basis for such an allegation.

YOU Mitch, made a bit claim not too far back about innocence until proven guilty, and about unfounded accusations without proof, when it suite your cause celebre, less stringent drunk driving law enforcement (effectively). Well, you just made an accusation that is not remotely warranted. YOU just passed on very publicly an accusation against people you don’t know, haven’t even met or seen apparently, relating to circumstances which have a far more probable honest explanation. Which frankly, anyone who had spent an appreciable amount of time at a care facility tracking the care of patients with Alzheimer’s would know and recognize.

Sorry, but this doesn’t sound to me like someone who is too on top of what is going on with mom, or who was all that concerned at the time. This sounds to me like someone got their knickers in a twist after a lot of bull has been circulated about election fraud.

Lets just see how many of these accusations prove valid. There was a reason – a damn good reason – that Coleman never brought up allegations of fraud in his court challenges. It was because he didn’t have any.

Nice of you to make them up now for him though.

Would you care to hear about some of the suspicions of illegal republican voting last election that I heard from an election judge? About some thirty individuals from Arizona, who claimed to be residents here — but were questionable in that they could not produce anything other than AZ ID, and had no proof of residency in the form of any utility bills or even mail of any kind. ONE person, from here, in a contested district, vouched for the first one — and then they vouched for the next and so on.

Yes – THAT was reported to the Sec State per an election judge. But absent any conclusive outcome you don’t see it all over the rest of the media, and you won’t see it given space on Penigma or anywhere else by me. I find the suspicion of an experienced election judge, backed up by other election judges expressing the same concerns, to be more credible for concern than a sticker and some literature.

“That is why by their laws and actions, dhimmicrats want to turn America into nation of young and the infirm.”

No jp, we independents and democrats just don’t want to hand America over to the auctioneers for sale to the highest bidding special interest.

Which is how Boehner will use the gavel if he becomes speaker. That would be Boehner handing out tobacco industry checks on the floor of Congress to influence tobacco related legislation Boehner. That would be the F35 two engines for every plane so long as they are made in his district Boehner, even if the military and two administrations have been trying to stop such waste.

This would be a good time gentlemen, to place a fun wager – no money, just bragging rights – on a bet that Boehner and the Republican shills for special interests will NOT decrease spending, and will ONLY benefit the already extremely wealthy. I’m betting the stock market will go down or at best remain flat with less growth than 2008-10, and that unemployment under Republican legislation will go up after making slow but steady progress downward under democrats.

Watch for that repeat of the Reagan era dramatic expansion of government that we also saw under Bush I and II.

Mail in absentee ballots. That’s the biggest chink in the armor (not that the armor is particularly strong anywhere).
In my state you fill out a form with SSN, place of residence, and the mailing address where you would like the ballot sent. If the address doesn’t match registration records, they change your registration based on the physical address you give them on the application. If you aren’t registered at all they register you when they get the application.

November 9th, 2010 at 11:43 amIf this were a serious concern – why is it only being brougth up in 2010?

“Dog is trying to claim there is a statute of limitation that covers abusing the mentally ill and elderly. Sheesh.”

No, you moron. If I wanted to claim a statute of limitations running, I would have said so.

I brought up the delay to point out that apparently this wasn’t of sufficient concern at the time for the email author to ask anyone at the facility about it; or to bring it up to anyone who could do an effective investigation, AT THE TIME. I brought up the time frame to suggest this person was lax in their attention to their aging and afflicted parent, and that they apparently didn’t think this THEN. Because they sure as hell knew the election was close between Franken and Coleman THEN. It was front page news.

I brought up the time frame to point out that the right is ginning up a fake controversy. Why dont YOU go have another slug of your alcohol of choice; it’s after 10 a.m. That seems YOUR speed Swiftee.

Mitch – I’ll make you a deal. I think you would have been more ethical to hold off running this post until you had more substance to go on, until after you had done at least a preliminary investigation, before bringing suspicion of wrong doing on the staff at this facility. Anonymous or not – that was wrong of you to do without proof.

But if you find any proof, even if it is inconclusive (say a voter registration, but no proof of voting) then I will not only support you, I will happily join you in writing about it and being critical of the misconduct.

But until you have PROOF, until AFTER you investigate – back off of accusations, or trying to intimate there is cause here. This is not in any way contrary to a nursing home or assisted living facility operating perfectly ethically. Hell, if you want help, I’ll join you in you investigation.

Or are YOU going to claim I’m not honest because I’m don’t conform to your politics?

Dog Gone Says: “Which is how Boehner will use the gavel if he becomes speaker. That would be Boehner handing out tobacco industry checks on the floor of Congress to influence tobacco related legislation Boehner. That would be the F35 two engines for every plane so long as they are made in his district Boehner, even if the military and two administrations have been trying to stop such waste.”

I thought the subject was about pirating the vote of a mental incompetent??

I wonder when Boehner will say: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

Your indignation seems more than a little contrived DG.

Dog Gone Says: “Why dont YOU go have another slug of your alcohol of choice; it’s after 10 a.m.”

The question is never whether they cheated, but where – and who has the smoking gun to prove it? All of the unions have mechanisms in place. All we have to do is find one of them willing to unmask the process. Either that, or have an enterprising journalist be given access to the inner sanctum of voter fraud and actually unpeel the onion.

I am not holding my breath for either eventuality. In the first case, it would be a death wish; in the second, there are no paid journalists in this town who actually WANT to discover the truth.

Mitch – I’ll make you a deal. I think you would have been more ethical to hold off running this post until you had more substance to go on, until after you had done at least a preliminary investigation, before bringing suspicion of wrong doing on the staff at this facility. Anonymous or not – that was wrong of you to do without proof.

No, DG, the anonymity was precisely what allows me to bring the accusation right now.

Perhaps you missed my post earlier today; I’m actively investigating the situation in Crow Wing County, in which group home staffers allegedly actively told handicapped residents who to vote for, and in one case allegedly filled out a ballot for a handicapped man.

Sometimes the best way to get proof – positive or negative – is to throw the allegation out there, and open the floodgates, if indeed there are any.

Or are YOU going to claim I’m not honest because I’m don’t conform to your politics?

Lets look at what is being trotted out here under the provocative title “by any means necessary’

An allegation that an old lady with diminshed capacity due to Alzheimer’s was MAYBE bullied into voting for a democrat in the 2008 election, because the employees MAYBE terrorized her with the threat that if she didn’t cooperate, she’d be out of the assisted living facility. The supposed evidence is a copy of the absentee ballot and/or early voting materials, and an “I VOTED” sticker on the elderly woman’s walker.

And this is not addressed until fully two years later? WHY NOW?

The materials in question are widely distributed at pretty much any facility that houses the elderly because the elderly vote – many of them by absentee ballot or early voting because of the infirmities of age (not necessarily impairment of mental capacity).

I Voted stickers are handed out at the polls like candy. I asked the last several times for extras which I mostly put on my computer (and on a more portable one I had borrowed for a time from Pen), and I have seen I Voted stickers handed out freely to children on request. I only voted once; those children who were at the polls at the same time I was did not vote at all — but there were multiple stickers!!!!!!!!! I Voted stickers are not like the Iraqi and Afghani elections where voting is established by sticking your finger in colored ink. They are just STICKERS.

So we are supposed to believe that the author of this email seriously believes all this time his mother might be being exploited, even terrorized, by the staff — staff he merely ASSUMES MIGHT lean democratic rather than conservative — and he leaves his ill mother in the care of these people? Really?

And he does not hesitate not only to entrust her care, but to make them – instead of himself – responsible for her voting rights. Here’s a clue – quality care in assisted living facilities do not take it on themselves to determine the rights of their residents – who are residents, not prisoners, no involuntary patients unless the provisions for it are precisely and legally determined. Legal rights, like voting, are not determined by care facilities; they are determined by family, doctors AND COURTS.

Further, I can attest from following the course of more than one person with Alzheimers from diagnosis to grave, the illness is not a constant; there are intermittent periods of perfect lucidity amid the confusion and eventual dementia, and patients have to be treated accordingly if they receive quality care. If this woman were capable of voting, if she were lucid, and if no court had taken away her right to do so, so long as she was not a danger to herself or others, there is a big question as to the legality of preventing her doing so — so even proof of voting is not proof that she was affected by the Alzheimer’s at the time — much less that she was coerced. Coercion like that is very very serious. WHY would anyone risk that – being fired, maybe going to jail? Really – this makes sense to you? For…….what? I don’t see a coerced vote that doesn’t directly benefit someone as worth the risk to someone, if I were a juror.

There is so much that is wrong with this scenario, not the least of which is that Mitch didn’t tell this man to go look at the voter record before making this wild unsupported claim. And he did not look it up himself to see if there was any merit to the allegation.

Instead, Mitch peddled moral panic – a false fear based on five characteristics: concern (not necessarily reasonable concern, just concern), hostility (we certainly have that present), consensus – Mitch appears to have persuaded this man to believe something he didn’t fully believe before, based on his actions or lack of them, disproportionality — the likelihood based on voting information and a sticker is an inadequate and disproportionat basis to believe voter fraud; and volatility – lots of upset, that comes and goes fairly quickly (depending on how much it is pushed on people).

I would be far more favorably inclined if Mitch had pointed out the weaknesses, not tried to spin this to look worse than it really does. I would have no problem if he investigated first before claiming this under the heading of “by any means necessary” as if it were a fact, or probable.